An Ancient Egyptian Senet Board in the Arizona State Museum

Abstract

Summary This article discusses a fragment of a rare, wooden slab-style Egyptian senet board that was given to the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona) in 1922 by Lily S. Place, an American who lived in Cairo in the 1910s and 1920s and purchased ancient Egyptian objects from dealers and in the bazaars; it has no ancient provenience. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, the authors provide a reading and interpretation of the incised hieroglyphs, establish a radiocarbon date for the game board from 980 to 838 B.C.E., identify the wood as Abies (fir), probably Abies cilicica, demonstrate that the board was fashioned from freshly-cut wood, and identify the inlay substance as a green copper-wax pigment.

Social Entertainment in Greco- Roman Egypt (Games and Sports)

“…14 | P a g e https://jaauth.journals.ekb.eg/ At that point, each player of Senet board played with five or seven pieces for each one (David, 2007 (Fig.20) and each player of the game had to be first to reach the square at the angle of the L-shaped arrangement inscribed with the sign meaning "happiness, beauty" (David, 2007) as well as there is general arrangement that the game was the race kind that was a kin to snakes and ladders, Ludo, or Backgammon, that it was for two players (Romano, Irene & Tait, William & Bisulca, Christina & Creasman, Pearce & Hodgins, Gregory & Wazny, Tomasz, 2018). The ancient Egyptians played the game sitting on the ground in the earliest times, whereas the Greeks and Romans sat on chairs (Falkener, 1892).…”

“…The ancient Egyptians played the game sitting on the ground in the earliest times, whereas the Greeks and Romans sat on chairs (Falkener, 1892). https://jaauth.journals.ekb.eg/ Fig.20: The movement of pieces in the game Senet (Robinson, 2015) Currently, the game was depended on the movement of draughtsman across a board consisting of 30 squares arranged into three parallel rows of ten squares (Mahmoud, 2017;Romano, Irene & Tait, William & Bisulca, Christina & Creasman, Pearce & Hodgins, Gregory & Wazny, Tomasz, 2018;Robinson, 2015) while the most used form was the cone or conoid, that surmounted by a pointed or spherical head: while there were several varieties of shape (Falkener, 1892). During the Greco-Roman times, cubic dice become more common and gradually replaced astragali for use with board games (Crist, Walter & Dunn-Vaturi, Anne-Elizabeth & de Voogt, Alex, 2016).…”

“…As well as, there is a theory that sport was born and flourished in ancient Egypt, and from there it spread to Greece, Rome and to the rest of the world for example, the early Egyptians seemed to have their own early Olympics, with competitions including Gymnastics, weightlifting, high jump, archery, hockey, long distance running and others (El-Gammal, 2008) (Fig.29) as well as many sports known in Greece, such as running, wrestling, and boxing, had developed their own independent traditions in Egypt. It seems that when the third century prosperity of the Ptolemies declined, some of the Alexandrian games disappeared (Romano, Irene & Tait, William & Bisulca, Christina & Creasman, Pearce & Hodgins, Gregory & Wazny, Tomasz, 2018).…”

“…Fragment represent location of samples for inlay analysis of Senet board "arrows", radiocarbon dating "red circle", and wood analysis "green circle"(Romano, Irene & Tait, William & Bisulca, Christina & Creasman, Pearce & Hodgins, Gregory & Wazny, Tomasz, 2018).…”